WineXCedega

WineX/Cedega

Program URL

http://www.transgaming.com/

What Is Cedega?

Cedega is a derivative of the program Wine. You will also see the program listed in articles and online resources as WineX, the recent old name of the program. The name Wine is an acronym for the phrase "Wine Is Not an Emulator," so don't call WineX/Cedega an emulator, either. The program acts like an emulator, as far as the average user is concerned, despite the differences behind the scenes. Whereas Wine is a program that enables Linux users to run Windows programs in Linux, Cedega lets you play games. Why have a different program for running games? That is where the X in WineX comes in. WineX/Cedega fully supports Microsoft's DirectX. DirectX is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) required to run most commercial games written for Windows. Cedega comes out with fairly frequent releases to keep up with new releases of DirectX.

With the name change from WineX to Cedega comes lots of other changes in the new release. Many gamers run Linux for most of their everyday tasks but keep a Windows partition around just to play games. Cedega's new release makes playing Windows games in Linux easier than ever with the new Point2Play interface, support for high-performance pixel shaders, and support for DirectX 9.0. There is also a new pricing scheme with a $5 monthly subscription. For frequent gamers, the subscription is worthwhile.

Finding Games for Cedega

Not every game that uses Microsoft's DirectX works in Cedega. Each game has to be tried out by the Cedega developers or by curious and brave Linux users. TransGaming Technologies, the makers of Cedega, maintain a forum on their Web site at http://www.transgaming.com/ for users to report experiences and problems. When running different games in Cedega, users can vote on which games they would like the Cedega team to work on. Cedega supports hundreds of Windows games. There is a list to browse of games that have successfully run in Cedega, all rated on how well they work. You are usually okay when you stick to games that are rated at a 4 or 5. Newer games are usually rated better than older games.

Playing Games with Cedega

Cedega works a bit differently from any of the game emulators we talked about. You don't run a ROM through Cedega; you need a copy of the game disk. To play a game in Cedega, you put in your Windows game disk and then start the game from within Cedega. As long as you did your homework ahead of time, checking the lists and comments about your game on the TransGaming site, you can get a game running quickly and easily in Cedega.

Copy Protection Catastrophes

Many new games use complex copy protection that is transparent when you play the games in Windows but that rears its head when you try to play the games in Linux. The copy-protection software thinks that you are trying to do something nefarious. To get around this problem, you might need to download a "no-CD" patch (sometimes simply called game fixes) for your game. Sites such as http://www.megagames.com/ maintain no-CD patches for many games. There are a lot of legal warnings for no-CD patches because the patches are sometimes used for pirating games. However, no-CD patches are perfectly legal to have when you own a copy of the game. I often use them so I can play my games on my laptop without dragging all the CDs around with me.

Playing a game in Cedega is not always that easy. You name the problem, and it can pop up. Before you get excited about running lots of games with Cedega, prepare to do some tweaking and research online to get games playing. Besides reading up on the game you want to play, you can prevent problems by using the testing tools that the program provides for you. Use the system tests in Cedega's Point2Play interface to check your system's 3D graphics, sound, and other required aspects. Although there are horror stories of other users trying to get games running in WineX, the new Cedega release is easier than the old WineX.